Maintenance worker crushed by 1.5 tonne weight

After he was crushed by a 1.5 tonne weight during a check of a recent repair job, one maintenance engineer sustained severe personal injuries, work accident claim experts recently reported.

The injured man, whose name has not been released to the public due to privacy concerns, had been employed at Rotherham’s Yorkshire Spin Galvanising Ltd, located in Cornish Way, at the time of the incident, say accident claim industry insiders. The man had been leaning over a guard rail in order to get a closer look at the recent repair when a zinc galvanising machine’s counterweight struck him, pinning his body against a nearby junction box and suffering several injuries during the incident, including damage to three of his vertebrae and fractures to his ribs and shoulder.

The galvanising firm, which is registered in Leeds, faced prosecution by the Government’s Health and Safety Executive for breaching the Health and Safety at Work Act at Rotherham Magistrates’ Court. Yorkshire Spin Galvanising Ltd admitted the breach at the hearing and was given a fine of £10,000 and also ordered to pay a total of £5,000 in court costs for the unnamed worker’s injuries.

An inspector with the HSE remarked that the injured maintenance engineer was lucky to be alive after the incident, as it could have easily resulted in his death. The procedures set in place by Yorkshire Spin Galvanising were woefully inadequate, the inspector also said.

In 2011 alone, there were twenty seven fatalities and 3,800 serious injuries in the manufacturing industry. Many injured workers went on to make personal injury claims against their employers.